


Our Darkest Hours

by RedTeamShark



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Real World, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood, Child Abuse, Claustrophobia, Cults, Gen, Gore, M/M, Minor Character Death, Re: Major Character Death most of them don't stick, Semi-canon Backstories, Vampire Hunters, Vampirism, child character death, graphic death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-20 03:57:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedTeamShark/pseuds/RedTeamShark
Summary: "My name was Caleb Widogast, and I thought I was very bright.”--Caleb Widogast, centuries old vampire, tells his story of death, suffering, and loss to a willing listener. It is a very long story.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So I was watching some Critical Role one shots, right? And Taliesin hosted two sessions of a Vampire: The Masquerade game, didn't he? And man, Liam O'Brien seemed _really into_ becoming a bloodsucking horror of the night, guys.
> 
> So I got a little idea.

The man sat at the table, looked about the apartment as furtively as possible. He watched from the corner of one eye, busying himself at the kitchen counter. Two glasses of water, a small plate with crackers and, after some rummaging in the fridge, slices of cheese. He didn’t keep much food on hand, had no real purpose for it, but what little he had, he was happy to offer the stranger that had approached him that evening.

“There’s no need to be nervous.”

“I beg to differ, with respect.” The soft drawl of words had enthralled him from the start, the tone so politely condescending. He hadn’t heard such vocal complexities in a long while.

“You requested the invitation, I provided. And I am a…” He set out the plate and glasses on the table with a closed-mouth smile. “A very generous host.”

Doubting eyes on his face, on the food and drink. “Do you… eat?”

“If it seems socially appropriate. Most foods taste the same now, though.” He took a seat, got comfortable and looked over the items the man had brought. A pen and paper, a flat rectangular device producing faint white light at regular intervals that displayed the time, a bag on the floor, out of sight. “Please, tell me about yourself before I return the favor.” His blue eyes locked on the man’s face, held his gaze steady.

“My name is Fjord, I work… well, I want to work for a publication company. I’ve been looking for a story, something big that will set me on that path, and… and I feel that yours might be it.” The gaze broke and he took in a breath, shaking his head quickly. “What did you just do?”

“You’ll want proof that I am… legitimate, _ja_? Something that shows I am not a human under a masquerade.” The accent had dropped during the charm. Curiouser and curiouser…

“You… what? Controlled me?”

“I made a very compelling suggestion which you seemed willing to comply with.” He caught Fjord’s gaze again, held it steady. “Throw yourself from the window.”

“Wh--I--no!” With an effort, he pulled his eyes away, looking to the window before a full-body shiver raced through him. Nothing out there but empty sky over the city. They were at least twenty floors above the pavement.  “No.”

“Two components: a suggestion and willing compliance. I can perhaps make you more willing to comply, but I cannot force. I cannot make you do something that you would not choose to do.” His smile was open-mouthed this time, sharp teeth shining in the dim light from over the stove. “I don’t wish to bring you harm, Fjord. I have a very long story, and the night is very new, and if you are willing to hear all of it, I would like to tell it.”

Fjord shuffled his belongings, fiddled with the flat rectangular device--a mobile phone, that had to be it--and also laid a much larger device on the table. “Pen and paper for notes, cell phone to record it, laptop for when my writin’ hand gets tired. I don’t usually take notes on my computer, too risky of somethin’ happening to the files, but if your story is as long as you say, I wanna have a back-up.”

“Perfectly fair.”

“So…” Fjord tapped a button on the phone before it went dark again, the pulsing time once more showing on the screen. “How long have you been… like this?”

“My friend, you may as well read the first page of a book and then jump directly to the end. The story is not in the conclusion, but in what happens along the way.”

“Of course. Please, begin where you’d like.”

He took a slow breath, sat back and tapped his fingers against the table. Traced his memory back over time, over the years and decades and centuries. Back through the miles, through cities and countries and continents.

“I was born in a small town in what today you call Germany. My name was Caleb Widogast, and I thought I was very bright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously there's an... inspiration for the structure of this story that a few lovely commenters have picked up on. And while I don't mind pointing out that yes, this story structure borrows from the structure of a certain book, I'm also no keen on getting sued for daring say the name fandom does not speak. Any comments that reference that inspiration I'm regretfully going to have to delete. <3
> 
> (And I should have put this note in when I first posted but I was having a suddenly hectic day, whoops.)


	2. Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I dream that Master Ikathon comes to our rooms while we sleep and… watches us.”

Prior to becoming a student of Trent Ikathon, my life was primarily unremarkable. I had parents who cared enough for me to allow me to continue schooling when I perhaps should have begun work. I had friends in the town, some of whom were also in school. Two of whom were as bright as I was…

Trent Ikathon came to our town one winter night, spoke at a community gathering. He was seeking pupils, he said, and had received a letter suggesting that there was one worthy of his tutelage here. We were excited, us three bright minds. The prospect to be taught by someone of standing, to become someone of standing yourself. It was all very compelling, very appealing.

Our teacher brought all three of us forward, spoke on our behalf of our intellect, our wit, the quickness and sharpness of our minds. I’ll never forget the glowing words he bestowed upon my head, “Caleb Widogast has never forgotten a thing he has been taught. He remembers and recalls with an accuracy that speaks of higher blessings.”

Trent’s eyes were on me, bright and avid, and I felt… special. I felt that my schooling was not a waste of time. I felt that if I was chosen, it would make my parents proud. I knew, of course, that they worried. I knew that they feared I was wasting time with books and numbers when I should have been seeking an apprenticeship. Oh, but if I could show them… If I could raise us all up…

A digression, my apologies. You don’t wish to know the hopes and dreams of a child of so long ago, I’m sure.

( _Caleb paused, looked out the window for a long while without blinking._

 _“If you want to tell me, I want to know,” Fjord finally said, licking his lips and tracing the pen lightly along the margin. The words seemed to startle Caleb from his own thoughts, eyes refocusing, attention back on Fjord before he began speaking again._ )

I was fifteen, a man by those standards. My parents were not ailing, but when I received word that Trent had agreed to take me as a pupil, they were… hesitant. There was always more work to be done at the farm than the three of us could handle, never mind just the two of them. Hiring out was an unacceptable expense.

My mother convinced my father that it would be permissible. That my starry-eyed promises of a better life for all of us would come true. I… cannot forgive myself for convincing her of that.

It was as we left town that the three of us learned we had all been accepted. There was much excitement and celebration between us, tearful goodbyes to our parents. Astrid’s mother and father ran the bakery and they gave us a loaf of delicious fresh bread for the trip to Trent’s estate.

If I close my eyes I can still see the house… or perhaps castle is a more proper term, at least as you Americans call them. Heavy stone walls with towers and parapets, encircling a manse within that could have easily housed a hundred. There were gardens all around it, overgrown almost to disgrace, ivy climbing the walls and covering some of the windows. It was… odd, but so grand compared to anything we had seen before that we did not question it.

We did not question the wan appearance of the servants, nor the shaky looks they gave each other when they thought we weren’t looking. We were given rooms, told that Master Ikathon was currently away but would return in short order. Freedom to roam the estate, but within a day a punishing course load of studies were set out before us.

We were apt, and more than that we were eager to prove ourselves. Astrid studied the poems of the Greeks in their language. Eodwulf took to the music with the fervor of any composer you may have heard of. And I studied war… The ancient wars of Alexander the Great, the more recent conquests of the Crusades across Europe. I obtained a copy of a text from the far east that spoke of war and began the painstaking process of translating it.

Our studies kept us working as if we were possessed, eager to show Trent how much we had learned independent of his instruction. We tested each other, pushed harder and harder to become the best of his pupils.

And one evening he was back, strolling in and looking at us as we sat at the supper table. I had the nearly-translated text in front of me. Astrid was writing. Eodwulf poured over a sheet of music he’d written earlier, humming now and again.

We all frozen when Trent walked into the room, looked at him with feverish eyes and waited for his judgement. It was a judgement, of course, a measure of our worthiness to continue to live in his home, eat his food, learn his lessons.

His eyes stopped on me, as piercing as that winter night in the village. He held my gaze until I was sure I would fall into an abyss if I looked longer, and then…

“Come with me,” he said, turning away from the table and walking out of the room. I scrambled to comply, my texts and meal both abandoned in favor of this sudden turn of attention. I’m certain Eodwulf and Astrid were glaring knives into my back the entire time.

Trent walked outside with me two paces behind, stopped at a bench that had been nearly swallowed by a bush. “What species is this?”

The question stunned me, was so far removed from my readings, that I floundered to respond. His hand came down on my back, a hard smack that stung my pride more than my skin. “ _Ligustrum vulgare_ ,” I answered, looking to him for approval, for confirmation. His gaze was unmoved, his face curled into a perpetual frown of disapproval. I second-guessed myself, not for the first time in my life, and turned to study the plant again.

“Correct.” Trent’s word sent a wave of relief crashing through me, his hand on my shoulder firm but not harming. “Tell me what else you have learned.”

Even now today, I have every word of that text in my memory… I went over it so many times in the translation, in the understanding… At times when I find myself overwhelmed, I simply begin to read it to myself, from my memory… None of it has ever left me.

And that night in the garden, I began reciting it to Trent, interjecting my own speculations on meaning. His face never changed, his approval never showed, but he didn’t stop me… he didn’t correct me. I knew I was right, and I knew he approved of what I had done.

So it was for all of us, seeking this approval so desperately whenever he would show up. We didn’t notice that he only came to us after the sun had set. We were so wrapped up in our own learnings--I moved from war to religion, Eodwulf from music to politics, Astrid from Greek poetry to Russian history--that we simply didn’t notice the odd things about the house. I didn’t notice.

Astrid spoke of it during a fencing match one afternoon, her footsteps light and quick, parrying Eodwulf to the edge of the arena before he countered. I was keeping score with half my attention, reading about the formation of Buddhism with the rest.

“Have you two been having odd dreams?” she asked, removing her helmet and crossing for a drink. That drew my full attention, looking from her to Eodwulf. She watched us both steadily, unflinching at her own words. “I dream that Master Ikathon comes to our rooms while we sleep and… watches us.”

“That’s nonsense, Astrid,” Eodwulf pushed the idea away before I could speak, before I could agree, and the words died on my tongue. “You’re just hysterical.”

Her attention focused solely on me, her eyes piercing into me. They were as green as the grass, bright and quick. You couldn’t lie to her eyes. “Caleb?”

You couldn’t, but I did anyways, even if she knew I did. “You’re hysterical,” I whispered, my mouth dry. I stood, brushed imagined dirt from my clothes and lifted my books. I couldn’t face her gaze in my lie, chose instead to run away to the piano room. Music had never been my forte, but when Eodwulf wasn’t working out another symphony it was the quietest room in the house.

Of course, there _were_ odd things that we _did_ notice. The servants, all so frail and wan, cycled through much more quickly than any of us thought appropriate. There were a few that stayed on regularly, faces we grew familiar with as the months passed, but the maids, the cooks, the stable hands… It was rare to see one for more than a few weeks before their thin face would be replaced with someone else.

Some of them were happily chatty during their first days, spoke of the generous payment offered for their rather standard services, but… soon enough, they’d grow quiet, move about their chores like ghosts before disappearing completely to be replaced by another.

Eodwulf proposed it could be something in the air, some weakening of the constitution that caused them to fall ill and require leave. When Astrid questioned his conclusion, cited the three of us as an example of newcomers who adapted well, he shrugged.

“Perhaps they’re from Brittany? Unused to the altitude here. Too far from the ocean. I don’t know, I’m not studying to be a doctor yet.”

We grew so accustomed to the odd happenings that we didn’t notice when they began happening to us. Trent would keep us later and later for private lessons, tutor us individually long into the night. I saw more than one sunrise as he finally released me to my room, allowed me a scant few hours of sleep before my individual study was to resume. He was quick with physical reprimand, a strike hard enough to bruise the pride… and the skin, as time went on. One evening as we were discussing the tortures of the Inquisition he abruptly took the poker from the fire and struck me on the arm with it.

“Now imagine having that on all parts of your body,” he said, unmoved as I fought a losing battle against screaming. He dismissed me to the doctor on hand with disgust, told me as I stumbled away that he expected better of his pupils.

There was never a question of leaving. We had to stay. We had made such lofty promises of becoming _better_ that we had little choice.

I don’t know which of us he spoke of this… _gift_ to first. Perhaps Eodwulf, who was so immediately entranced by him, so eager to please. Perhaps Astrid, to ease her narrowed, suspicious eyes. Or perhaps I was the first, as I was the first to draw his individual attention.

It was a late night of lessons on navies and navigation, his hand abruptly covering the page I was writing upon. He grasped my chin, tilted my head up and locked his eyes with mine for a long time.

“Do you wish to live forever, Caleb Widogast?”

It was the first time he’d spoken my name, and that more than the actual words struck me. I swallowed, licked my lips and felt myself falling into the abyss that came with holding his gaze. “What… What do you mean?”

“Do you wish to live forever?”

Of course I did. Who wouldn’t want such a thing? And at fifteen--no, I was sixteen then… At sixteen, it already seemed that I would. “I do.”

He released me physically and mentally, nodded to himself before gesturing to the star charts he had hung on the walls. “Continue.”

I believe--and this is only a guess--that Eodwulf was the first to… change. The first to accept Trent’s _gift_. He fell ill as winter became spring, but many of us did around that time, the change in the air and the shift from cold to hot and back to cold as night and day cycled. I myself had a persistent cough and Astrid held a look of exhaustion under her eyes that I foolishly blamed on the tutoring being too intense for her. She was a fierce competitor and a bright mind, but she was also a girl at a time when girls were not expected to be either of those things, and my judgement was undoubtedly clouded by that notion.

It happened to all three of us so quickly, you see, that I don’t know which of us truly fell to it first. Eodwulf became sick, Astrid became exhausted, and I… I began to feel different. A walk in the gardens had been one of the few joys I had to look forward to as the long winter came to an end. Being in sunlight, feeling it warm my skin, sitting among the overruling flowers and studying. Yet the first day it was warm enough to go outside and do such a thing, I could manage little more than an hour in the sun before I was sweating and sick, before I had to return inside and lie down in my room, the curtains drawn and the blankets wrapped tight around me.

Trent moved all of our lessons to night not long after, taught the three of us together by candlelight. His reprimands were just as harsh and sudden, his demands of our studies just as strong. We were all learning the same items at this point, arithmetic and Latin… He spoke the language not with the hesitations of one who has read the texts in a church, but with the graceful ease of someone who has learned it growing up. It was another sign we ignored.

I suppose, however, that you’re most interested in the change itself.

( _“I’m interested in all of it,” Fjord spoke up for the first time in almost an hour, taking Caleb’s pause to shake out his writing hand. “Everythin’ that you want to tell me.” He stretched his fingers and cracked his wrist before poising his pen above the paper again._ )

I have a very sharp memory, you see. It is not just saved for text on paper, but for events, timeline, emotion… Even in my deepest slumber, I am aware of how long until the next sunset, and in wakefulness I know how long I have until sunrise. This is not some aspect of my inhuman nature, it is a gift that has always been with me… So I remember it so exactly.

It was the solstice day, the longest day of the year. Despite how it tired me to do so, I sat on the back porch, facing west as the sun set. Astrid joined me after a time, sat with her head on my shoulder and the dark circles under her eyes. Eodwulf came and stood beside us just as the edge of the sun touched the horizon, settled his hand lightly on the back of my neck and curled his fingers against the mark that had shown up there sometime during the winter.

“It’s tonight, isn’t it?” I asked… of them, of myself, of the world at large I don’t know.

“It has to be.” Astrid lifted one pale hand and wrapped her fingers around mine, squeezed weakly.

We suspected, in our own ways. I suspected. There were legends and rumors, just as horrifying then as they are now. Eodwulf stroked his thumb against the back of my neck and joined the two of us on the wide chair--a tight fit for three, but we didn’t oppose being close.

“It will be okay,” he spoke with such confidence, so clearly wrapped around Trent’s finger. “In fact, it will be better.”

We watched that final sunset together, until the last glimmer of light faded over the edge of the horizon.

Have you heard of an effect called the green flash? I looked this up many years later, curious what it could mean. It is something that happens, sometimes, as the sun sets… a flash of green. It is of course explained by science, the atmosphere and refraction of light--rather boring, I know. But that last sunset, we saw it… a flash of sickly green. A sign of our fates. Astrid crossed herself, Eodwulf whispered up a prayer, and I clutched the necklace my mother had given me, held the small cross on it until the metal imprinted into my palm like a brand.

Then we went inside and there was Trent, ready to instruct us in a new type of lesson.


	3. Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The soul dies, perhaps, when the closed lid of a coffin--what should be a very final act, never to be undone--is opened to a new night and the first thought in your waking mind is _feed_.

The body dies like this:

First is the surge of adrenaline, the panic as your brain realizes that this is known as _mortal danger._  This is stepping too close to the edge of the cliff, this is walking in a dark alley alone, this is crossing a busy street without looking. Your heart beats faster, your focus narrows to the quickest means of escape, your muscles tense and prepare you for the action you’re about to take.

When that isn’t enough to remove you from danger, something else takes over. Instinct, the nervous system. You no longer control your actions with conscious decision. You fight and claw and scream. You’re drowning in open water, kicking desperately to stay above the surface.

There is a moment in here, however, that even that control snaps. The body goes into shock. Extremities become numb, perhaps unresponsive. Your mind stops processing pain and begins instead to determine what is the most important priority. If you’re drowning, it’s air and this is the moment when, deep under the water, you will gasp for a breath. If you’re bleeding…

The heart rate actually slows if you’re bleeding. An eerie calm, a feeling of… of acceptance. A knowledge that everything will be okay and you can just… let go.

The spirit dies like this:

Trent took us to the basement, then the wine cellar, then the root cellar. He lifted an old trap door from the dirt, had us climb down the ladder one by one, into the deepest darkness. What was left of our humanity we left with that last sunset.

He was… gentle. Lined us up against the wall, told us not to be afraid. Told us that he was giving us a great gift, the greatest gift someone could ever receive. And for a wonder… We saw it as a gift, too. Don’t mistake what the drag of time, what the consequences of actions, has done to me… It was an amazing opportunity. We were not afraid. Astrid stood between Eodwulf and I, held our hands and faced Trent with a sort of… serenity.

“We’re ready,” she said, her lips curved into a little smile, “for your gift, Master Ikathon.”

“What a good girl you are.”

He started with Eodwulf, held him to the wall and… The _sounds_ it made, my resolve cracked. I would have fled if Astrid hadn’t been holding my hand so tightly. I think… I like to think, she was having the same reservations, that my grip on her was just as anchoring to what we were about to do.

I was next, held down by Trent Ikathon and… changed. He kept me in place, kept me from fighting as he killed my body. It was not slow, we spent the better part of an hour in that sub-basement, between the three of us.

Just as I began to fall, cold and lifeless, drained of blood, he reached up. Yanked the necklace my mother had given me from around my throat and cast it aside. “I am your god now,” he whispered, pressed his open, bleeding wrist to my lips. “Take your new sacrament.”

I partook, suckled as a child at the mother’s breast. That blood, dirty and tainted and full of sin, passed my lips and entered my body and I… changed.

I see it on your face, your question. When this happened, I was a boy of sixteen. Sitting before you is a man of… say, thirty? Thirty-five? Split the difference, say I’m thirty-three. My long life of the night was not always this coherent. This well-remembered, yes, but there was a time… several years, in fact, where I was little more than a mindless drone to do Trent Ikathon’s bidding. I believe that not being fully in control of myself is what caused me to… degrade. Age. There are, unfortunately, some questions that even I don’t have answers to.

He brought us upstairs, when he was done, into the castle’s piano room. Three servants, looking pale and frightened, had been left there, locked in after the sun sank. Trent called the eldest of the three over, stood him before us and trailed a long-fingered hand over his neck, touched the point that we would penetrate with our newly elongated teeth. The other two wept in the corner, held out their fingers to us in the sign of the cross. I was rapt, my eyes on the fluttering pulse-point under Trent’s fingers, my body so suddenly wracked with hunger, with _thirst_ , that I nearly shoved him out of the way to get to it.

Astrid stepped forward before I could, laid her hand over the servant’s trembling chest and gave him her reassuring smile. “It doesn’t hurt, darling,” she whispered, head tilting into his neck as Trent’s hand moved away. She fed as he screamed, held him in place as his struggles weakened and eventually stopped.

“Enough,” Trent commanded, pushing her away from the body. “You must let Death finish the job or he could decide to take you as well.”

She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, primly wiped her mouth and nodded. “Of course, Master Ikathon.”

And so Eodwulf and I fell on the others, drank until our thirst was slaked. If Trent’s blood was my new sacrament, this was my new communion. Taking a human life and feeling… nothing for the corpse on the floor.

We were returned to our lessons. We learned of the danger of the sun, of the stake. There are so many methods to destroy a vampire, according to myth, but so few of them work… A stake through the heart followed by decapitation is messier than most want to engage in, but effective. Direct sunlight will turn us to ash where we stand. Otherwise…

Religious paraphernalia doesn’t bother me more than any standard atheist. Some of it I even find pleasing, aesthetically. Garlic is a mild irritant at worst, similar to any strong spice. What else…? Running water does not bother me. Silver causes an irritation to the skin, though modern myth doesn’t typically include that for vampires.

Fire… Fire will do incredible damage to the physical form…

( _Caleb stopped again, looked far-away in his own mind. Fjord opened up his laptop, began the process of booting it up and grabbed himself another glass of water. When he sat back down, Caleb seemed to snap back to the present._

 _“Ways to be destroyed?” Fjord prompted, tapping open a blank document and settling in to type._ )

There are probably a few I don’t know of with varying degrees of effectivity. And humans, clever as you are, always seem to come up with new ones. I read it in books and trash magazines and less trash comics, the ways you come up with to brutalize that which doesn’t belong. And in newspapers, the ways you come up with to brutalize each other.

Not that I’m one to judge.

When our lessons for the night were done, as much knowledge about our new lives as we could take in given, Trent returned us to the basement. There were four coffins lined up and as the sun rose somewhere above ground and outside, he settled us each into ours, tucked us away as a parent does a sleepy child. He didn’t linger, didn’t offer any level of kindness or reassurance… and we didn’t seek it. Mere children, perfectly content to let this man control us on such a level. But we had been willingly under his thumb for a long time.

The soul dies, perhaps, when the closed lid of a coffin--what should be a very final act, never to be undone--is opened to a new night and the first thought in your waking mind is _feed._

( _The silence this time was longer, the look on Caleb’s face more pained. Fjord may not have been an artist, but he tried to memorize it, tried to put words to the expression. He’d seen regret before, he’d seen suffering… this went beyond that._

 _Finally, Caleb took a long drink from his thus far untouched glass of water, made a face and cleared his throat._ )

We were his monsters. His students of the night, losing whatever humanity we could have salvaged at his command. The nights blurred together over the years, doing his bidding with no thoughts of my own, with no means to refute orders.

That first winter, with long nights at our disposal, he took us home. Back to our village. We slept in coffins in the back of a carriage by day, fed on livestock by night. Almost anything that has blood can be a meal, and we don’t need it terribly often… Perhaps a liter every night is enough to sustain us. Overindulge and we can go a time without. Useful information.

We went home. We went to Eodwulf’s home first, sat at a tasteless meal with his parents as they asked about our studies, about our time away. A year and a half it had been, we had learned much in the ways of the world and even more in the ways of the night. As the moon rose and we all retreated to sleep, Trent gave Eodwulf his orders and he…

The next night we visited Astrid’s family. Late, so late, sitting quietly in the dim candlelight as they spoke with her earnestly. There was a new baby brother, they had sent a letter but weren’t sure if it had reached her, and the infant… She held him, touched his hair and spoke soft words to him… And when Trent asked her to… She did what she was told. Eodwulf and I took care of her parents, had our fill for the evening from them and left them dying in each other’s arms.

My own home was next, the smallest trickle of dread within me at the thought. I couldn’t let it show on my face, of course, there was just as much competition for Trent’s approval in this field as there had been in any of our academics.

My parents, my mother and my father… I will never forget the look on their faces… The joy turned to horror as they realized I had become a monster. There was no need to feed this night, they… I…

I murdered them because Trent told me to. Set their home on fire as their blood spilled across the ground and the four of us left in the back of a carriage. I looked back as the flames burned, felt heat not from the inferno of my childhood home but from Trent’s gaze in the back of my head.

Words cannot convey the conflict… The knowledge of what a monster I had become. Perhaps I had failed. Perhaps, after everything, my mind was simply too weak to handle it. Bright I may have been, with an excellent memory, but even with Trent’s gift, his curse, I thought of myself as nothing more than Caleb Widogast, the son of people who worked the land, the boy who was growing into a man to make his parents proud, to raise their status.

And I broke, I suppose.

The years that followed that winter passed as a blur, a series of events with no meaningful order or time between them. We packed our things and left Trent’s home. We traveled, first by carriage and then by boat down a river. Cities rose and fell around us, wars ravaged the lands and retreated. Empires meant nothing to us in our eternity.

Eodwulf and Astrid thrived on this life, on being the monsters Trent wanted. He was strong, fierce, willful against everyone but Trent. She was clever and quick. And I… I became a shell. I followed orders but unlike them, I did not think independently. Not until…

We went to Romania, and I met another of my kind.


	4. Knowledge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Come on, now, you’re a smart boy again. You can figure it out.”

Someone had to have turned Trent. He was old and knowledgeable, but not ancient enough to have been the first. Someone had to have turned him and taught him. Though I was… feeble, the knowledge lingered somewhere in my mind.

We took the Danube down, followed the great river as the years passed. Somehow, Trent always found humans willing to be his agents during the daytime, and he passed us off as different things. Himself an aging uncle, taken care of by his niece and nephew, looking to spend out his final days in quiet isolation. Often times I was kept hidden away, only permitted to act in the deepest hours of the night, with supervision from one of them.

Another time, we took the students ruse again, drew in eager learners to our home. Trent tested and trialed them, changed those that passed his standards and allowed us to… to play with those that didn’t.

When we reached the Danube delta, we were some ten strong. Trent the unquestioned leader, Astrid and Eodwulf working at his side to control the newer students, myself a lingering threat of what would happen if they disobeyed… if they weren’t capable.

She came to us at night, spoke with one of the newer inductees. I stood in the shadows with Eodwulf, waited for the order to destroy, to feed… But she smelled different. She was one of us, one not under Trent’s control.

He spoke with her alone in the grand library of the manor, words not meant for our ears. But we heard, we heard his raised voice, his declarations. She did not change tone, her words did not pass through the thick old doors.

The summation of the argument was that he was being reckless, creating a coven that would raise questions. He had no purpose for his small army, no plans for controlling us. It was then that I learned, while Trent was wise, he was not the wisest of us all. It was then that whatever remained of my mind began to turn.

She left with her chin high, paused at the door and looked to the shadows where Eodwulf and I lingered. Her eyes met mine, her steady gaze softening for just a moment. Her lips moved, spoke words I could not hear, could not understand, before she was out the door.

Trent made his irritation known that evening, tore into one of the newer ones who spoke out of turn not with words but with physical action. It was the first time we’d seen one of our own be so brutalized… Just before the sun rose, he made us watch as he locked the young one in the sun room to perish. We knew of his wrath from our human lives, of his temper, of his…

This was different. This was not an earned rebuke and though my mind moved much slower than it had, I saw the looks. The fears between the younger ones. The concerns between Astrid and Eodwulf… The acceptance. They would follow him.

We packed our things to leave and Trent pulled me aside, degrading and stupid and obedient to a fault. He told me to remain, to watch, to feed when I required it… and to kill the woman if she returned. He told me not to speak to her and I accepted his orders.

Months I may have spent wandering about that house, going to the fields to feed on livestock, to the town to drain the occasional drunk. I was stupid, but he had instilled care in me and I knew better than to draw undue attention to my activities. Or so I thought.

She returned one evening, shortly after sundown as I woke and began my usual rounds. Her footsteps were silent, her presence upon me before I’d fully realized she was there. She held me in place with an arm around my throat, spoke words of power into my ear as I fought to escape her grasp and follow Trent’s orders.

The words, whatever they were, snapped into my mind. Old language, dead language, but something in it… Perhaps a power, perhaps just a realization… It cleared me. She let go when I stopped fighting and I turned to face her, to look at her.

“What…” I had been ordered not to speak and my mouth snapped shut, eyes on her face. She met my gaze steadily, impassive as she had been before.

“Tell me your name.”

“Caleb Widogast.”

“How long have you been in his service, Caleb Widogast?”

“I don’t… I don’t know. Time doesn’t matter much. As long as Eodwulf and Astrid.”

Her hand touched my cheek and she smiled, parted her lips to show her sharp teeth. “You’re free of what he’s done to you. Where has he gone, Caleb Widogast?”

I didn’t know, only shrugged a shoulder in response. Her gaze held mine, compelled answers to her questions.

“Come on, now, you’re a smart boy again. You can figure it out.”

And for a wonder, I could. We had traveled along the Danube from Germany, stayed close to the river for the ease of transport it offered. If he were to continue with that, he would cross the Black Sea, travel eastward towards Russia.

A shout before I could answer her, a cry from the manor’s gate. Her attention left me, eyes going wide as she looked to the crowd that had begun to form there. An ancient curse muttered under her breath, arms shoving me towards the back wall. “Foolish, foolish man, he’s left you here to kill me or be killed… Go. Find him. Put a stop to what he’s building. I’ll--” A massive crash ended her words, the gate falling behind us, people from town storming in.

They had become wise to the presence of something unnatural in their midst. Too many deaths of livestock and drunks, too many nervous whispers about what walked at night in the manor on the hill. Had she not come that night, they surely would have destroyed me. I was under no orders to prevent that, I don’t believe it would have crossed my mind to do so… She sent me on my way and I fled, my mind still reeling with its returned acuity.

I never learned her name…

( _“Had that happened before?” Fjord asked, sitting upright again and cracking his spine. “People in a town becoming suspicious and setting out to destroy you?”_

 _Caleb considered the question, before bumping one shoulder up in a shrug. “Not to my knowledge. If it had, we moved on before they pinpointed our location.” There was a noise from across the room, a soft_ mrowl _sound as a cat padded in. It looked at Fjord with the type of contempt only cats can hold before it jumped onto Caleb’s lap, curled up, and began to purr._ )

I scrounged in small towns for a number of nights, fed and robbed until I had clothing that better worked the disguise I wanted and enough coin to buy myself passage across the sea. I could have stowed away, I have since, but for the time being I wanted to seem… human enough. I wanted to be able to surprise Trent when I returned.

And surprise him I did.

With my wits about me, I realized just how lucky I was, how lucky we all were, to be alive under his leadership. He was reckless and messy, his confidence built not from expertise but from how disposable we were to him. I asked around towns along the river and soon enough the stories began, creatures of the night, those that went to work in the manors and never returned home… I followed his blood trail into Russia, into the cold north where the nights could last for months. It was a long trail, I was far behind when I began and he was moving faster than before.

I finally found them in a city far to the north, a place along the White Sea that saw as little as ten hours of sunshine in a month during the winters. An excellent place for a creature that abhors sunlight, and somewhere that appearances only after dark wouldn’t raise questions.

It was becoming spring, they would likely move on soon, the darkness of winter traded for longer days and shorter nights during the summer months.

I found them with no real plan, no real way to do what I knew had to be done… So I watched. Trent had increased his numbers since Romania, had perhaps fifteen total now. Eodwulf and Astrid were still by his side, still as young and lovely as I remembered them. Most of the new ones were unfamiliar to me, only two faces sparking recognition.

I hid and I planned, and when the time was right I struck.

There was no opportunity to get all of them, but I did enough damage. Trent was away, Astrid had gone with him, and I knew an opportunity when I saw it. Eodwulf stayed behind, sent the younger ones away and I snuck into the home they had secured as they fed.

My plan was simple and brutal, almost effective. I brought with me an axe, flammable oil, and a torch. If there was no home, if there was no central focus, they would scatter and weaken. I could hunt them individually, if I so desired, or let time take them.

I worked quickly once I was inside, spread the oil across the floor behind me. Chased away the human servants that saw me, felled those that tried to stop me. It was a greater kindness than to awaken burning.

In the basement I found them, their coffins, almost thirty lined up all together. I took the axe to them, sweating for time, unsure if I would be able to destroy them all before the sun rose. He had such unexpectedly grand plans.

I was almost done, maybe four left, when Eodwulf found me. He entered the room on light steps and in my fervor to do my work and be gone I almost didn’t hear him. Almost.

“Caleb.” His voice, right before his hand touched my shoulder. I went still, turned to him and met his eyes. His confusion cleared after a moment, a grin crossing his face. “You’ve come home.”

“Eodwulf…” I dropped the axe, let him draw me in to an embrace. We were close as humans, we could be close again as vampires… My arms lifted, the sharpened end of the torch pointing to his back. “I’ve missed you,” I whispered before I drove it forward, aimed to shove it through his heart from behind.

He seemed to know my movements, my plan--my foolish, transparent plan. His hands gripped my upper arms and he held me at bay, his face near to mine. “You don’t want to do that, Caleb. It will make Master Ikathon very, _very_ displeased with you.”

My fingers fell limp, the torch hitting the floor, rolling through the flammable oil and soaking the rag. I hadn’t lit it yet… If I had, I wouldn’t be here telling you this story, I suppose. Eodwulf held me stunned and stupid with his gaze, his fingers digging into the aching muscles of my arms with enough pressure to rend the flesh. Nails punctured into my skin and the strange pain snapped through my mind, cleared my thoughts of his poisonous gaze. “I don’t care what he thinks.”

Fury overtook Eodwulf’s features in an instant, his strong arms lifting me, hurling me across the cellar. I landed among the splinters of coffins, felt small fragments of them pierce into my back, my legs, my arms. “You’re a fool, Caleb. A weak, stupid fool.”

I dragged myself to my feet, looked among my options. Fleeing was out of the question, he was between me and the stairs. I had never been able to best Eodwulf in a physical tussle in life, the few that we’d had… but Astrid had. Astrid’s cat-like grace and finesse often left him puzzling out her movements, stuck swinging wildly with plainly readable actions. I danced back from him, put my back to the wall and counted the seconds.

As expected, he lunged for me.

The uneven dirt floor was my favor, not his. His heavy footfalls took extra moments to find balance, while my light steps ignored the rough terrain and focused on moving me concisely. I slipped out of his rush, let him his the wall as I backed away to the stairs. “Eodwulf, it doesn’t have to be like this.”

“You were never meant to be one of us, Caleb. Master Ikathon told me.”

The words were meant to stun me, but unfortunately for Eodwulf, having my mind about me had filled in many gaps that I hadn’t concerned myself with before. I knew I meant nothing to Trent, but I knew something my childhood friend didn’t: neither did he.

Still, I let my jaw hang slack, let my eyes search his face. “But… he… I…” My feet shuffled to the side, one hand bracing on the wall, the torch near my toes, pointed end of it jutting out towards Eodwulf. Perfect. I wouldn’t get to feign this again.

From the corner of my eye, I saw his haughty grin, his self-control resumed as he strolled towards me. “You’ve always thought you were so perfect, Caleb, but the truth is you’re not. Astrid and I, _we’re_ perfect. We make Master Ikathon happy, make him proud. You? You were never anything to him but a nuisance. A convenient thing to be used… and discarded when he was done with it.” His hand touched my arm and I crumpled to the ground, grasped my hair and shook my head. “Don’t feel too bad, old friend. Not everyone can be brilliant.”

I felt nothing for his words, nothing for his condescending tone. Let him have this moment as his last.

Lightning fast I turned on him, grabbed the stake and drove it forward, into his chest.

I pulled away as he stumbled, fell with his back to the wall. “Ca… leb…” His hands felt his chest, felt where dark blood pooled against his shirt, around the stake that jutted from him. His gaze turned on me, smugness warped into confusion and fury. “Wha…”

“You want to know a real truth? He doesn’t value you, either, Eodwulf.” The stake had weakened him, just as Trent had warned us so long ago. I lifted the axe and with effort, my back and arms aching, I brought it down on his neck.

Again and again, until he lay still in two pieces.

I resumed my work with the coffins, Eodwulf’s blood staining my hands and arms now, reeking of old death. Before I left I took the torch from his shriveling corpse, lit it as I made my way back to the main floor of the manor.

The oil caught easily, turned the fine home into a raging inferno in minutes. I fled, aware of how short my time was to return to my own safety.

The next night I visited the smoulder, found a scattering of his lost children. I disposed of them with stakes and my axe as I had Eodwulf, watched the ones that escaped flee into the night. There would be no chasing them this time. I was exhausted, desperately hungry, and could almost feel a prying eye that turned in my direction. I had no way of knowing if Trent would suspect me, but at the same time…

I found it best to leave.


	5. Mistakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was a human that was straying near Death, and I knew better than to feed from her… until her eyes opened a crack, and she looked at me… and smiled.

Living so far north didn’t interest me, regardless. The long nights of winter were not, in my opinion, a fair trade for the long days of summer. I traveled south and west, aware that my preference spoke more of fleeing than of simply moving on. What I had done to Eodwulf, to the others, would surely reach Trent’s ears.

Along the way, I… perhaps made the worst mistake of my long life.

I was in a poorer district of a city, walking through alleys without fear, looking for a viable meal. Livestock would suffice when I was travelling by land, rats when by sea, but in a city… My craving for human blood could become overwhelming. I didn’t visit cities often.

There was a small pile of rags at the end of the alley that moved as I approached. Rats, I had decided, would be the meal of the night. When I lifted the rag, however, I didn’t find a rat, but a small, frail girl. Her hair was matted and stringy, her eyes nearly swollen shut. What I could see of her skin was covered in lesions and from her came the rank smell of disease.

This was a human that was straying near Death, and I knew better than to feed from her… until her eyes opened a crack, and she looked at me… and smiled.

“ _Ты Смерть_?” she asked, hand reaching out, touching my cheek.

I’ve learned Russian since then, but at the time I had no comprehension of her words, nor her of mine. I placed my hand over hers, turned and kissed the inside of her delicate wrist. Later I would know, she had asked if I was Death. Later she would know that the answer was no, _нет_ , I was something far worse.

“What is your name?” I asked this frail figure, crouching down in the dirty alley and drawing her to me.

She looked unblinking into my face, the face of a monster, and shook her head. “ _Нет_.”

“Nott?”

From her swollen eyes, tears fell, her cracked lips splitting into a smile. “ _Да_.” A word I could understand, or at least guess at.

“Are you afraid of me?” Her thin arms wrapped around my shoulders and I lifted her, barely any weight at all. Bare feet scrabbled at the air before her legs wrapped around my waist, her head dropping to my shoulder. And there, as a tangle of her hair fell away, I saw what I knew I needed.

My mind whispered of the sin I was committing, of not just killing this poor child but turning her into a monster like myself. In that moment, my teeth poised over her neck, her thin frame clinging to me, I knew I was condemning myself to an eternal hell far worse than any I had previously imagined… and still I bit. I heard her small gasp, felt her arms tighten around me for a moment, and I drank of her blood. I took away her life and her pain, and just as she fell limp in my grasp…

I had seen Trent do it, I knew the means of passing on this curse. My mind screamed for me to let her die, to do one kindness in this wretched existence, and I bit into my own wrist and pressed it to her lips.

She drank of my curse, her swollen eyes fluttering open, gaze meeting mine and looking so… so _thankful_ I was nearly sick. I pulled free and took her hand, led her from the alley as she began to renew with this dark magic.

Without language it was difficult, but she seemed compliant to what I desired. Together we found a man asleep in a park and she fed from him, left off when I pulled her away. I took her in my arms and we made haste to the cemetery, found a crypt with a broken lock to sleep in for the day. Just before the sun rose, her little body pressed up tight to mine, she whispered in my ear. “ _Спасибо_."

My loneliness had cost this child her immortal soul… and she _thanked_ me for it.

( _Fjord’s fingers stilled on the keyboard, his eyes on Caleb’s face. Such pain and regret, but what lingered to him was… “So you can change others?”_

 _“_ Ja _.”_

 _“Interestin’... when you’re ready to carry on, then.”_ )

We meandered our way through the countryside, westward along the northern coast. Nott reminded me of myself, almost painfully so. She consumed knowledge as if it fed her, adapted quickly to new learning. I promised her, again and again, to one day let her see the places she read about in books, far off lands of Asia and Africa.

She matured in personality as well as intelligence… The body of a child, the soulless gaze of the monster I had turned her into… but the nature of a grown woman. She nurtured those around her, often brought in stray kittens and nursed them to adulthood. Although I was years her senior in appearance and decades so in age, she… took care of me when I was not able to take care of myself. I would wake in our shared confines with screaming terrors, convinced that Trent stood on the other side with a stake at the ready. Those nights I would be useless to our needs, to acquire food or transport, and she would lead me along, a wretch of a girl with her catatonic father. She had no issues with begging for coin, nor with stealing when that did not work. Her ability to flip from small girl peril to the barked orders of a mother at the end of a long day never ceased to impress me.

I warned her, as I felt I had to, about Trent. About what had created me, and her by extension. I told her, slowly, over time, of the horrors he had used me to commit… What I had done to my own parents, to Eodwulf. And for those things, she… did not judge me harshly, as I judged myself. She held me as I wept, stroked my hair and told me that it would be okay.

“One day, Caleb, you’ll see that this is not your fault. That you are not a monster… And until that day comes, I will remain by your side.” Her voice, scratchy and high-pitched, never quite healed from the wretched state it was in like her body had. I sat and wept as she stood before me, held her thin frame in my arms and told myself that her words of comfort were empty promises, just like all the promises I’d made to myself.

She asked if we could go to France for the summer and of course I agreed. How could I refuse?

France was beautiful in the summer, and we traveled by night along the rivers, down through the country to the Mediterranean. Never in one place for very long, never established… We were vagrants, needing neither coin nor comfort.

I suppose I’d like to believe that this lifestyle was to repent for what I had done while under Trent’s control. What I had done to Nott in my desperation to not be alone. That my wanderings, my squallor, were a sort of self-flagellation. Were I a better person, perhaps they would have been. This journey, however, was driven by self preservation and fear, not penance. I knew I was beyond redemption, my actions only another layer of sin to my mere existence. There were many nights when I considered just staying in the sun, letting it take me away from my wretched life… But that would mean leaving Nott alone, and she was the only joy I had left in this world.

And dying... that would mean a victory for Trent and whatever he had been trying to build. I could die, I told myself, after I stopped him. As far as I knew, I was the only one left with any knowledge of the situation.

So we traveled, fed when we needed to, dumped corpses from fresh graves and used their coffins as our resting place for the day. That is… particularly disturbing to think about, in hindsight. Subjecting a child, even one who I had touched with this curse, to such morbid affairs.

By the sea coast we met another night wanderer, and she… she reminded me what a home could feel like.

Marseille has always been a region of class, of sophistication. Not a place that I belonged at that time, my plan to stow us away on a ship and perhaps try our luck in another port. Coming to live with a courtesan of the night and her daughter was the furthest thing from my intentions.

The Ruby of the Sea, Marion Lavore, was beautiful, had numerous songs and stories dedicated to her. She was a performer, a singer and actress of high quality, as well as a companion. And her daughter… Well, you had to know Jester to even begin to understand her.

I met Jester at the docks, saw her walking along, heard her singing. No fear despite the late hour, no hurry to be somewhere… She was young, barely into adolescence, and despite my growing hunger, I would not go to her. An easy target she may have been, but killing a child was… Not below my standards, as the girl holding my hand that night showed, but not to my taste. Old drunkards were my preference, and there were always a few dozen of them around the docks.

Jester had other plans, spotting us across the way, calling out with a wave. She ran to us, skirts flying behind her, stopped with flushed cheeks and panting breaths. I could hear her quickened pulse in her veins, see it in her neck, and my body pulled me to feed on her. In my hand, Nott’s grip tightened, the same hunger clouding her mind.

“You want to come see my mom, don’t you?” Jester asked me, a question so bizarre I had to take my time to puzzle it out, as if she’d spoken a completely alien language. “Yes, you want to come meet the Ruby of the Sea!” She took my free hand with both of hers, turned a beaming smile on Nott, and led us away. “I have never met a child like you before, oh, you are so cute!”

We had little choice but to follow, to see where this would lead. I was prepared, as much as it turned my stomach, to kill this girl and flee with Nott if things became… unsavory.

I was not prepared for the brothel.

Women and men in fine clothes entertained each other, some women with women and some men with men, a thing almost unheard of in such public spaces at the time. Jester led us, filthy and out of place, both her and Nott clearly too young to be in such a place, to a darkened back room where a woman sat in a fine chaise lounge chair with a bottle of wine by her side.

“I found you some new customers, Momma!” Jester let us go, finally, crossed the room and kissed the woman’s cheek. “This is… What are your names?”

“I am Caleb… This is Nott…” I shielded her with my arm, felt her head poke around me to look. “We… I am not sure we have the coin for what services you may offer.”

“I don’t concern myself with coin, my dear…” Marion Lavore, the Ruby of the Sea, stood slowly, crossed the room to us and looked us both over with a critical eye. “Did you turn her?”

“I…”

“I have never seen one so young before…” She crouched down, somehow graceful even in that movement, and touched a hand to Nott’s cheek. “Are you hungry, dear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Jester, sweetie, will you fetch Renna for me?” Jester was gone in a flash, Marion’s attention on me again. “I know you are vampires. I know you require blood to be sated. If you are willing to follow my rules, I will give you a meal and a place to sleep for the day…” Her gaze turned cold, locked on me with more power than a human had ever had. “If you cause undue harm or danger to myself, my establishment, or any of my merchandise, I will not hesitate to drag you into the sun and let you become ash. Remember that.”

Jester returned with another woman, one of the finely dressed entertainers from the front room. She held her hand out to Nott, spoke soft words and drew the girl away from me. I let her go willingly, still entranced by Marion. No one had ever spoken of this before… had ever made an offer… She gestured me to the bed and I joined her, watched with narrowed eyes as she produced a knife.

“What are you…” She shushed me gently, cut the skin of her delicate wrist until blood welled and pressed it to my lips. I attached immediately, felt the familiar rush of dizziness as I fed.

The scream drew me back, gasping, hearing Jester’s high-pitched yell from across the room a moment before her body assaulted mine, surprising power behind her blows. “Don’t kill my mom!”

“Jester, darling… it’s okay…” Marion’s skin was pale, her cheeks hollow and eyes sunken. She carefully tied a handkerchief around her bleeding wrist, pressed her hand over it. “I’ll be fine after I rest… and you are full, are you not, Caleb?”

I had not drained her to the brink of death, not even close… but I found myself content, my thirst slaked for the night. I nodded, wiped a hand on my mouth and looked around. “Nott…”

“Here, Caleb!” she called my name from across the room, settled comfortably on the lap of the woman, Renna, that had been brought in. “She let me eat!”

And so we came to live with the Ruby of the Sea and her strange daughter. We did not feed on human blood every night, but there were willing companions when we required it, and livestock that Marion owned for when no willing assistance could be had.

We stayed on with them for nearly a decade, a short time made longer by our fondness for their strange ways. Renna grew close to Nott, the two of them often having long talks about political discourse as they sat together by the fire. And I… met someone as well.

His name was Jaron, one of the male companions. They brought him in for me to feed one night, his eyes wide, giving him a more youthful appearance. He wore little, exposed tanned, muscled skin to the flickering candles and my steady gaze. Something stirred in me, something I had not felt for a very long time. A craving for… physical intimacy. I drank of his blood and then we… performed other acts together… You’ll pardon me for skipping the details, but there are some things that should remain… personal. Some memories that I wish to keep to myself.

Where was I?

Oh, yes. A decade in their good company. They took no issue with caring for us long term… And there were others like us that came. Rarely for long and rarely did Nott or I speak with them, but I recognized the tell-tale handkerchief wrapped around the wrist of someone I had not fed on that night. I knew there had to be others out there, older than myself, newer than Nott, all sorts. They did not stay on as we did, perhaps were not lost wanderers of the night as we were.

Jester grew up, a sensation that was… strange. I’d spent so long around things like myself, things that didn’t age willingly, that seeing her change so rapidly was almost off putting. She was off limits for feeding, which only seemed fair, but often she’d come to me afterwards, sit by my side and ask questions about my damned existence. I told her what I felt was appropriate, what I felt I could safely share.

I should have warned her about Trent. Her and Marion both.

There was a streak of mischief in Jester that her coming of age did not wane. She was fond of pranks, of silliness, of causing mayhem for entertainment. Nott adored it, I tolerated it, and Marion accepted it with casual good humor. She held enough standing to cover the costs of any damages and enough blackmail on prominent figures to make true trouble mostly disappear.

Mostly…

Things collided without our knowing. A harmless prank--quite hilarious, really--pulled by Jester that sent us away for some time until business could calm down. She was of an age and a standing, she took in a client in her mother’s stead while Marion was busy. Blindfolded the man, dressed him in one of her mother’s girdles, and proceeded to… lock him out of the bedroom, on the balcony. This wouldn’t have been terrible, per say, had it not been the middle of the day on a festival day when nearly the entire town passed by Marion’s business at one point or another and saw this man--a minor political figure with just enough power to let it go to his head--in naught but a girdle.

Oh, Jester laughed when she told me, her bright giggling counterpointing her gruff mockery of the things he had called her while trying to force the doors open. And I laughed as well, laughed harder than I had in recent memory… Marion didn’t find it as funny, especially not when the man returned with officers of the law, demanded Jester’s arrest.

She packed us up in the middle of the night, instructed Jester to leave and find a quiet place far away. Instructed me to look after her daughter. There was another brothel that would cater to our needs, a place Jester could stay until Marion could either calm the man’s temper or quietly slip out of town.

We went to Italy, found the city and the business along the Adriatic Sea. It was different than the Mediterranean, cooler air, a different sort of people… But we adjusted quickly to anything new, Nott and I, and Jester thrived in the environment. She spoke of being free of her mother’s thumb, as if I could not see the longing looks out the window when she thought she was alone.

Nott and I had our own share of longing looks backwards, thoughts of Renna and Jaron, if Marion would bring them to us, if we could be allowed to return to them. Renna was one of the few who treated Nott as an intellectual equal despite her young appearance, and Jaron… I longed for his closeness, for the humanity that being with him made me feel.

I never did learn what became of them--the end all people see, I would suppose--and I doubt they ever learned of our fates… If they cared to, after we fled.

Marion joined us at the end of summer, said that by the next spring we should be safe to return to Marseille. We settled in for a winter, unaware of what those long dark nights would bring.


	6. Engulfed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You stop right there, Caleb Widogast, or I bleed the girl dry.”

Before things took a turn for the worse, they were… quite good. Italy had some of the oldest sources of wisdom on the continent, some of the most intricate details of the past. While much had been lost during times of war and conquest, there was an ongoing effort to preserve the past by the time we arrived. Near to the brothel we called home was a library, and I spent many long nights there with a candle burning low by my side, studying tomes of all varieties.

I learned more about my own nature in that library than I ever had from Trent. Books upon books of myth and legend, my experiences enough to parse out fact from fiction. Occasionally Nott would join me, read through the texts over my shoulder and ask questions. Explanation, I still find, is the best teacher. I learned as much from her questions as I did from my own, her curious mind forcing mine to think along different paths, bringing me to greater understanding.

I learned of the origins of the curse, of the first vampires. A being cast out of the light not by gods or magic, but by society. Something that lurked in the darkness, almost human but _wrong_. Ancient accounts of livestock lost to night predators, wolves and big cats and creatures that drained the blood but did not consume the flesh. People who would begin to act strangely and disappear into the night from their small tribes or villages.

Your modern medicine calls psychology into this, and perhaps in these days that’s what it would be. Perhaps your medicines or therapies could cure this.

Then, though, before electric lights, before monster movies with men in cheap rubber suits, before you put the real horrors humanity is capable of on television in front of every man, woman, and child in this world… Then, it was simply known.

Vampires.

The books held volumes on how to prevent this, both in life and in death. Plant fresh rose bushes over the graves of those who were thought to be afflicted. Encircle cemeteries with iron. Wear a ring of pure metal on the left pinky finger. Perhaps my favorite suggestion of the myths, it was rumored that owning a cat would chase away any potential vampirism.

( _As if called by the word, the cat on Caleb’s lap mewled, jumping down and crossing the room. He stretched and yawned before sitting down in front of the empty dish in the corner, tail twitching and head turning to look back over his shoulder._

 _“It is not your supper time yet, Frumpkin,” Caleb chided, shaking his head at the meowed response. “Little beast…”_ )

There was a point in that information when it turned. When the shadows that were known became mystery… and then the religious tilt. A cross to ward away the evil that stalked the night. Prayers. The origins rewritten to make us into creatures rejected by God rather than man.

Both could be true, I suppose, but our story far pre-dated any single theism.

“You are not a monster of his design,” Nott told me while we discussed the religious turn of our origins. She sat upon my lap, her head resting on my shoulder and her hands holding mine. “He may have influenced your creation, but he is not the origin of your nature. You don’t have to be like him.”

It was one of the few comforts in this long, miserable existence I was cursed with. To learn that his way was not the sole path, to learn that his sin had not been burdened on my shoulders. I held her close, felt a well of long fouled emotion within me finally release. We could be free of him. I could be free of him.

I was a fool.

Nott and I returned from an evening excursion to find the brothel dark and quiet--unusual, for the time of night. It put my guard up immediately, my hand stilling her steps. “Go around to the back,” I whispered, watching her scurry away, her light footsteps barely audible, muffled by the freshly fallen snow.

I crept forward, let myself in and was almost immediately overwhelmed with the smell of blood. A single lantern lay guttering on the floor and I lifted it, exposed a room of horror before me. Patrons and workers alike lay in slaughter, their throats torn open. I forced down my revulsion with the greatest effort, my mind immediately jumping to Jester and Marion. I did not see them among these bodies…

I rushed to the stairs, took them up two at a time with no thought of subtlety. This was a monstrosity and there was only one type of creature that could commit it. I had killed Eodwulf, I would kill this one. Marion kept stakes and sharp knives in her armoire just in case of such an event.

The blow that struck me as I stormed into her room left me staggering, the lantern dropped from my hand and once again guttered on the floor. I fell against the wall, heard a cry of desperation that my mind matched to Jester’s voice.

“Don’t hurt him!”

So similar in tone to that first night, the fear and anger. My vision blurred and I blinked it clear in time to see the nightmare before me.

Marion and Jester upon the bed, holding each other tightly. Between them and myself, Astrid stood, as young and proud as I remembered her. And across the room, sat in a chair…

Trent looked no different than the first day I met him, though now blood stained his clothes. His eyes met mine and held, my limbs going weak under his gaze. “Caleb…” He stood up slowly, crossed the room almost in a blink and held my chin in his grip. “You’ve caused me such a headache, boy.” His nails dug into my skin, put pressure on my jaw until I felt sure it would crack. “Destroyed my home, destroyed so many of my precious creations… sent others scattering to the four winds to be destroyed by those that would take my power from me…” He threw me back one-handed and my head hit the wall, eyes losing focus again.

“You were never worthy of my gift. Not like Astrid. Not even like Eodwulf, as ineffective as he proved to be.” Trent turned his back, folded his arms behind him as he walked and I saw it, the stake in his hand. He could have killed me against the wall, he _should_ have done so. But of course, he had to preen first. To show off for his audience. “I’ve known where you were for years. Poland. France. And now here… it seemed as good a time as any to tie up your loose end, and I do enjoy Italy in the winter.”

“Do what you have to, then.” My voice didn’t shake, I’m proud to say. If he was going to kill me, I wasn’t going to die in fear. From the corner of my eye, movement, a small, nimble figure creeping up to the balcony doors. Nott. There was no way to tell her to run, not without drawing attention to her. I could feel Astrid’s eyes on me, her gaze burning into me.

“Oh, I intend to. But first…” He whipped around, hauled Marion from the bed, tore her away from Jester. They both screamed, the sounds muffled as hands covered their mouths.

Astrid had Jester’s wriggling form in her arms, hissed and tightened her grip. “She bit me!”

“Then return the favor, girl,” Trent snapped, wrenching Marion’s head to the side, pressing his mouth close to her neck. “Let him watch as we murder his lovers.”

There was Trent’s mistake. He had chilled me with the thought that he watched me. It had been my nightmare for decades. But hearing him call Jester and Marion my _lovers_ … I knew immediately that his finding me was nothing more than happenstance, that his seeming knowledge of where I had been was just guesswork. It was a good guess, to be sure, but it was still a guess. My resolve steeled, the things I had learned in the library rushing back to me. I was not a monster of his design. I was my own monster.

I stood, used the wall for support and met his eyes without feeling my muscles go weak. “What are you waiting for?”

The surprise on his face was vindicating, the affirmation that he was not as all-powerful as he purported himself to be. And the look of shock, of pain, that followed was even better.

He had let himself slip. He didn’t know about Nott. With me pinned to the wall by fear, with Marion and Jester mere humans held in his and Astrid’s iron grips, he let his guard down.

Nott drove the stake Trent had been holding into his back with a fierce shriek, darted away before he could make a grab for her. Trent howled in pain, scrambled to reach back and remove it, and I ran forward.

Things happened very quickly, but they remain very clear in my mind, the sequence of events.

When Trent released Marion she ran, scooped up the lantern I had dropped and held it aloft. Astrid eased her grip on Jester, looked between her master and her meal. I advanced on Trent, forced him to the ground on his back and saw a gout of dark blood well between his lips.

“Caleb!” Nott yelled my name, her small body rushing towards me with a knife in hand. “Finish it!”

“You can’t.” Trent’s voice, not at all strained despite the wooden stake driven into his back, paused my steps. My fatal mistake.

“Stop!” Astrid’s voice, loud and harsh, her word a command that froze the room. I looked to her from the corner of my eye, saw the proximity of her teeth to Jester’s neck. “You stop right there, Caleb Widogast, or I bleed the girl dry.”

“Jester…” Marion’s voice, her words weak, her hands shaking, sending dancing lanternlight around the room.

“Momma…”

Their voices broke my resolve, my oncoming vengeance. What was my clear mind at the cost of their lives? What was my easy slumber, if theirs was eternal? I could not repay their kindness with allowing them to die.

It was enough. Trent surged up from the floor, yanked the stake from his back in another gush of almost black blood. He slammed Marion to the wall and this time when the lantern dropped, it shattered.

“No!” The rapidly spreading fire moved me, forced my body into action ahead of my brain. I saw twin splashes of blood, Trent at Marion’s throat and Astrid at Jester’s.

Astrid was closer. I tackled her, forced her to the floor, to the fire. She shrieked in my face, raked claw-like nails down my arms as I held her in the flames. Her hair caught alight, her skin melting like candle wax. Her clothing went up like a torch and the sleeves of my coat began to smolder, the skin below began to char.

It was the worst pain I had experienced since death, and I felt none of it at the time.

Trent dropped Marion to bleed on the floor, left the burning room unnoticed. I shook Astrid in the flames, felt her body still fighting against me.

It was Marion that pulled me away, Marion with blood pouring from her neck, her eyes wide and desperate. “Jester!” She shouted into my face, shoving my frenzy at her gasping daughter. “Save her!”

The wound Astrid had inflicted on Jester was much more serious than Marion’s. I fell to the bed beside her, my hands burned, useless. “Nott!”

She was at my side in a moment, her eyes wide. “Yes, Caleb?”

“My arm, up here. Bite it open.” We’d fed earlier in the evening, before going for our nightly walk. There was fresh blood in me to turn her. Nott’s hands ripped away the charred remains of my coat sleeve, her teeth sinking into my arm and drawing blood. She pulled away coughing as I pressed it to Jester’s lips, feeling just how close Death lay to her. “Drink, damn you!”

For a long, burning minute I thought I was too late. This one request Marion had made of me, this one returned favor… I felt Nott’s weight at my side, her hands patting out the smoldering remains of my coat sleeve.

And then Jester gasped, her eyes opening wide, her body convulsing. She clutched onto me, pressed sharp teeth into my neck and sobbed. “My mom…”

We looked around the room, through the thick smoke that was beginning to fill it and burn our eyes. There Marion lay, her eyes closed, her body alight… pinning Astrid’s still struggling form to the ground.

Fire will not kill us outright, but… it will do something far worse.

The alarm had been raised, the calls in the night of _fire_. We fled, Nott leading the three of us, finding us somewhere safe to sleep for the day. We bundled into a coffin, all three together despite the tight fit, and the sleep of death held us. Healed us, to an extent.

( _Caleb raised his hands to the table, turned over palms scarred with ancient burns. He rolled up his sleeves, showed Fjord the places his flesh had been reduced to charred ruin and come back. “Some injuries we don’t even notice. Some we heal from after a short time. And some… some stay with us forever.”_

_“And Astrid?”_

_“I did not go check, but if she was still alive when the flames were extinguished, she would have perished in the sun. There wasn’t enough left of her to crawl into a coffin and safely hide.”_ )

I did not feel safe staying in one location for long. The only aspect of our lives Jester needed to truly adapt to was the killing. Nott and I resumed it with ease, a decade of consensual blood drinking hardly enough to take our edge off. She accepted it, eventually, would walk with Nott and myself in the night until we found a proper meal.

We hurried as far from the Adriatic Sea as we could get, fled to the rapidly opening west. We crossed the ocean to America, New York, just as spring began to clear the snow from the ground.

There were many nights we would awaken to the screams of one or the other. Jester, Nott, myself… all were plagued by terrible nightmares. Terrible cases of what-if and memories replayed that were often worse. I would hold the two of them close to me in the early moonlight, shivering with fright, looking about to make sure we were alone.

They faded, as all things do… Faded to ashes behind us as the idea of Europe trailed off into the horizon, as we faced a New York City on the cusp of its modern self. Far too busy for anyone to notice anyone else’s strange comings and goings.

We loved it.


	7. Curiosity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mister Caleb, I can assure you, everyone’s story can be told with these cards."

It took time, of course, for the full fears to fade. For all three of us to stop having nightmares, to stop looking over our shoulders. We had come to America as so many before us had, seeking new beginnings. Seeking to escape that from our past which would harm us.

Our vagrant lifestyle did not hold up in this land. Regular employment was also not an option. We discussed it one night as we walked through the city, considered where we might acquire funds. And the answer strolled right up to us.

He was young and quick, eyes down as he walked, hardly garnered notice until it was too late. A brush against me, a mumbled apology that I waved off. This city was full of the types to brush against you and keep going… Except this time I felt his hand skim along my waist.

I caught his wrist before he could pass, pulled him back to me and took a step into the alley he had probably been about to disappear down. Nott and Jester closed in around me, all of us watching as his face went white with panic.

“L-let go!”

“Easy now, young man.” I found my wallet in his palm, plucked it back to my own possession and passed it to Jester. “We do not intend you harm.” I held his gaze, felt his body go lax under my stare. “Now, young man… I cannot let you take everything I have. But you are quick and you are clever, and I see in your eyes a desperation that mirrors my own this night… Your desperation, however, is for something much less dangerous than mine.” My eyes kept his in place, power rushing through me as he submitted to my will. “You will forget this happened, _ja_? Of course. Embarrassing to be caught. And you will point us to a place where there are few prying eyes, where we may find our dark desires. Do you understand?”

He nodded, hand slack in my grip now, and I gently released my hold on his wrist. With a shaking breath he gave directions, a district of town we had not yet visited. A place where a few missing persons would not be noticed.

We fed that night, emptied the pockets of those we killed. It was not much, but it bought us a hotel for the next day, a private room we could lock and seal the sun away from.

And so we came to live in the city.

( _Stretching, arching his back, Caleb looked to the window. The night was growing late, the sun still a few hours away, but… “This is not a short story to tell, I am afraid.”_

_“I could come back tomorrow?” Fjord offered, grabbing himself another glass of water and putting his laptop aside for his pen and paper again._

_“_ Nein… _No. I can finish it tonight.”_ )

We did not stay in one place for long, even here, but… we were not fleeing. We moved inland on occasion, north or south as it suited us… But New York drew us back. It has always been a very compelling city and as time marched forward and it grew closer and closer to what it would become, it felt… safe. Too populated for us to stand out. Too busy for our odd hours to be of note. We were able to live in almost normal circumstances.

It was summer and we were by the sea. Jester loved the waters of the Atlantic, though they were nothing like the coast she had grown up on, and I had a difficult time refusing her earnest requests. We were at a pier, a sort of… permanent summer carnival, posing as a family together and exploring the joyous nature of a world that had stopped fearing the dark.

He caught my eye and… were I human, I suppose my heart would have stopped for a moment. My footsteps paused, my eyes locking on this figure across the way. He was… gorgeous. He caught my attention in a way no one since Jaron had, held me captivated by the way he moved. And somehow, across the crowd, across the distance, he saw me looking, held my eye and tilted his head in invitation.

I drifted over to him without a word to my companions, left them to contemplate between games of chance and skill and rides of danger and thrill. I parted the crowd and disappeared into it, stepped in close to this man at his small tent.

“You look like someone who wants to hear his fortune, friend.” He shuffled cards as he spoke, beamed a smile and held the deck out to me. “First glance is free.”

My eyes were on his face, intent, my hands trembling at my sides. He was so… so _alive_. So vibrant. He was so many things I would never be, would never have… so many things I had not appreciated in so long. “What is your name?” I asked, my mouth dry, my lips cracking with the effort to speak.

“Well, you can call me Mollymauk Tealeaf. Fabulous fortune teller of The Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities.” He bowed with a flourish, stood again and gave me that same beaming smile. “And who’s story am I telling tonight?”

“Caleb Widogast. I… do not believe there are enough nights in a lifetime to tell my story.”

He laughed, head dropping back, his eyes closed with the mirth, and I found myself smiling at him. Unashamed, unworried that he would see my true nature and flee. He didn’t seem to care.

“Mister Caleb, I can assure you, everyone’s story can be told with these cards. Now, come.” His hands clapped, the deck that had been on the table between them once more as he separated his palms. When had it even moved to the table? I was unsure. “Select a card and if you like what you see, we will continue.”

My fingers brushed along the cards, the smooth surfaces. They were nothing more than a child’s game, I knew deep down, but something in his eyes… Something in _him_ , called forward belief from me. I selected a card and he gently took it from my fingers, brushed his hand along mine and held the card up before me. “The Queen of Swords,” I read, looking from the figure on the card to the man behind it.

Mollymauk Tealeaf turned the card in his hand, smiled and nodded as he set it on the table. “Oh, she’s a fine one to see on your first draw. Swords follow the air element, believe things to be a constant but can themselves become a great force of change. They’re double-edged, if you’ll pardon the pun… Ambition and conflict, truth and communication. The Queen of Swords…” His hand touched mine, fingers dancing along my palm and sending shivers up my back. “Upright, as you saw her, she’s about a clear mind. A path taken with no concerns looking back. Being aware of what is around you, yes, but not bogged down by it.”

I felt my fingers responding to his touch, my hand touching his in the same dancing way, and pulled back quickly. I could not allow myself such closeness to a human. I had seen too frequently what it had caused. I lived with the burden of too many destroyed lives every time I looked to Jester, to Nott, to myself. “I appreciate the information, Mollymauk Tealeaf, but--”

“Caleb!” Jester’s voice rescued me, the sight of her rushing to me with Nott in tow. She wrapped herself around my arm, pulled me away from Mollymauk Tealeaf. “There you are! Come on, they’re closing the pier soon and--” Her eyes darted to Mollymauk as he shuffled his cards again, narrowed and suspicious. “And Nott and I want to see the fireworks.”

“Yes, of course.” I took her arm with mine, turned and gave the strange fortune teller a last look over my shoulder. “It was a pleasure, Mister Mollymauk. Thank you.”

That should have been the last time I saw him.

There was no reason for me to become close to a human. Their lives were fleeting, over in a blink of my eyes. The things they could offer… While I remembered, still remember, Jaron’s closeness fondly, he was also… aware. He knew things about me that Mollymauk Tealeaf would run screaming from. There was no reason for this man to draw me in.

I went back to the pier just after sundown the next night, alone, found his little tent and table. Both were empty, his cards gone, his voice not calling out, the light that seemed to shine from him completely extinguished. There was no reason for it to bother me, no reason for me to care, but I lingered, ran my hands over the gouged wood, walked around the back of the little tent and looked for any trace of the strange human.

I will admit that my senses are not flawless. I can be sneaked up on, I can be startled… But usually humans are so noisy, usually I am aware of their presence long before they are aware of mine.

“Looking for something?” The voice was soft but it still nearly sent me jumping out of my skin. I whipped around, looked up into the face of an imposing woman who stood before me with her arms crossed. Our eyes met and in that instant, I knew that she knew. “Who are you?”

There were few options. I could attempt to flee through the night, fight my way off the pier and away from her. I could lie and make a hasty escape without causing a scene.

I told the truth. “My name is Caleb Widogast.”

“What are you looking for?”

“The fortune teller who was here last night… Mollymauk Tealeaf… He… I…” Her eyes did not waver from my face and I felt the creeping pressure in the back of my head that always arose when I was faced with a figure of higher authority. “He made the offer to tell my fortune and I was pulled away before I could accept.”

“Molly’s not here tonight. And…” Her hand dropped to my shoulder, large and heavy, squeezing. “And it’s probably for the best that you don’t seek him out.” The threat in the words was undercut with the way her eyes darted to the side, as if looking for some other danger. “Be thankful I don’t sweep your ashes into an urn to return to whoever sent you.”

“Sent…?” She guided me away before I could fully understand her statement, before I could defend myself. Dumped me rather unceremoniously outside of the pier with a knowing look to the ones stationed at the front.

The next night, I sent Nott in my stead. We had used ruses of this nature before, to isolate, to kill. It did not please me to do such a thing, but desperate times… She wandered among the pier, held a small stuffed toy she had won herself a previous night. When she was close to Mollymauk Tealeaf’s fortune telling booth, when she could see him, she began to weep.

 _Неуклюжий отец, Tollpatschiger Vater_ , Clumsy Father. She wept and called for her papa, and Mollymauk Tealeaf, blessed soul that he was, came to her aid just as we suspected. She was a little girl who had come to the fun pier with her dad and gotten separated, knew where to meet him by name but not how to get there.

Molly played right into her game. He held her hand and walked her back through the dancing lights and bustling crowds, directly to the darker place where I stood waiting. I saw them approach and dipped deeper into the shadows, beckoned Nott to bring him in with a tilt of my head. Her eyes gleamed, her face sticky from a candied apple he’d bought her that she’d pretended to eat. I could see the thoughts on her face, that soon she’d have something much more delicious from this kind man.

“Darling, there you are!” I scooped her into my arms and held her, turned my attention to Mollymauk Tealeaf. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing her back to me.”

“It was not an issue, Mister Caleb.” Another flourishing bow, his feet digging into the soft sand below the pier. “Though this is a strange place to agree to meet…”

I wanted him. I wanted him desperately. He wore a shirt that lay mostly open, his neck and much of his chest bared to the night. There were tattoos on his skin, a peacock the most prominent. I wanted to taste the ink on his skin before sinking my teeth into him.

Nott’s fingers grasped the back of my neck, her mouth close to my ear. “ _Давайте есть_ ,” she offered, her impassive gaze on the man that had ‘helped’ her. Let’s eat.

“Perhaps I could repay you…” I feigned a fumble for my wallet, balanced the girl in my arm carefully against my side. “I have coin--” The words froze in my throat, my eyes narrowing as they landed on him again. Mister Caleb. He recalled who I was. That was not part of the plan. I looked to him slowly, saw his broad grin stretch in the moonlight.

“I don’t need your coin, friend. Please, enjoy the rest of your evening.” He walked away across the soft sand as Nott’s fingers dug into my skin, her little body tense in my arms.

We fed on one of the unsuspecting vagrants that night, long after the pier had darkened for the evening. I could feel her gaze on me, the demand of why we hadn’t just taken the kind stranger like usual. The question of what I had planned with someone who seemingly knew my name.

We should have moved on, but Mollymauk Tealeaf and his strange companions raised too many questions.

Mollymauk’s story could fill just as many pages of your little notebook as my own, despite his short life. Even now, I do not know all of it… but I learned enough to understand. To know why the woman was so fiercely protective of him, why I was so unwelcome to see him. And of course, why none of that stopped me from wanting him.

We danced around each other for much of that summer, met by chance and fate under the moonlight near the waves. He seemed as drawn to me as I was to him, as interested in me as I was in him… For very different reasons. This enigma of a man, this Mollymauk Tealeaf, filled me with questions.

His companions in the carnival grew used to seeing me around. They would wave to me, would even allow me to their backstage, to where their rooms were. The woman I had met at Molly’s tent my second night there kept a distrustful eye on me, her arms crossed, as Molly showed me around the carnival, introduced me to the others there. Her name was Yasha.

Eventually she accepted that I didn’t mean any harm, though she never strayed very far from us.

We lay in Mollymauk’s narrow bunk one night, my lips tasting the tattoos on his skin as I’d dreamt of, fantasized about. I touched them, explored them, the peacock, the sun and moon, the serpent, the ever-watching pyramid. My fingertips traced over the eye of the peacock, the red nearly glowing in the dim light. This mark was different, not ink, but… I pressed lightly, felt his pulse jump under my fingers. I remembered fingers on my own neck, touching a similar spot, a similar mark. “Mollymauk…”

“I don’t know.” His voice, usually so joyous, shook with nerves. He lay on his back, lifted his arm and dropped it over his eyes. “I don’t know a lot about myself, Caleb.”

My tongue touched the mark and he jolted, hissed in a breath. “Do you have others?”

“I got the tattoos to hide them. To… to make my body my own.” His shaking hand guided mine, to the eye of the serpent on his hand, to the center of the pyramid at the base of his neck, to a drop of blood from a rose’s thorn on his shoulder. I touched each one in turn, felt his muscles tense under the contact. “I tried to put ink over them and it faded, left them there, so I put it around them to hide them.”

“You are a very curious person, Mollymauk Tealeaf.”

Yasha walked me back after Molly had fallen asleep, gripped my upper arm harshly. “Do not hurt him,” she whispered, the warning low and sincere. “I don’t care that you’re not from that group, do _not_ take from him what you… feed on.”

“I do not intend to.” He fulfilled a different need of mine, a need I so often suppressed. With Mollymauk I felt human. I felt capable of doing right by the world. It was something I had nearly forgotten so many times. “I have no interest in harming him.”

“Interests and actions don’t always line up.”

Her distrust was not misplaced. I’d often wait with trepidation for Molly to ask the wrong question, to piece together the wrong information and discover me for what I truly am. I would have to kill him, if that happened… I could not, would not, destroy his beautiful soul with this curse.

I didn’t have to.


	8. Torment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mollymauk Tealeaf’s nightmare was my waking evening, reaching out and touching the lid of my coffin.

Autumn arrived and the carnival packed up to leave, the pier closing with the end of summer. That last night, we walked along the beach, bundled into coats against the harsher breeze from the ocean. Molly stopped in the shadows under the pier, now silent above us, and held my hands in his.

“I can’t ask you to come with me.”

I had my little family, Jester and Nott. We had our own plans for the winter. I reached up, held Molly’s face in my hands and watched him in the moonlight. “And I cannot ask you to stay with me.”

“Next summer…” He licked his lips, leaned in close and pressed a warm kiss to my mouth. “Don’t forget me, okay?”

“Never, Mollymauk Tealeaf.”

He went south for the winter and I went north. He followed the carnival to places where coin would flow freely and I followed my instincts to long nights and warm blood.

We returned to the shore in early spring, weeks ahead of when the carnival would arrive. As Jester described it, my ‘insufferable moping’ simply would not let her enjoy the New England spring to the fullest extent. Nott gave me her smile of indulgence, of knowing… and I could deny neither of them. I had spent the winter pining for Mollymauk, craving his intimacy, his light, his humanity, more than I craved the blood that sustained me. While I was not as useless as I had been in the past, I relied on my companions to care for our affairs far more than I had since arriving in America. My winter drifted by slowly, consumed with thoughts of what the summer would return to me.

Yasha came ahead of the carnival, with no sign of Mollymauk. She found me in the streets late one night, held my arms with the ferocity not of protection but of desperation. “You said you wouldn’t harm him.”

I met her eyes, held her gaze steady and studied her. Something had happened, something was wrong and it sent a tendril of icy fear through me. “Yasha… What has happened?”

“Mollymauk has disappeared. They found him. I couldn’t stop them from taking him back.” She shook me lightly, her eyes locked on my face. “You are one of them. You can rescue him from them. Right?”

I lifted my hands, set them over hers and held her gaze. “Calm down.” She fought the command, looked away, tightened her grip on me. “Yasha. Be calm. Tell me what has happened.”

Mollymauk Tealeaf had escaped a horror that left me chilled to my core. He had awoken with the circus, his mind blank of memory, his body marked and scarred, his tongue silenced in his mouth. He couldn’t speak of what had happened to him before.

He woke from nightmares, screaming ‘empty’ over and over.

Eventually his words returned. The carnival kept him in, kept him safe and close. Yasha heard of his story, pieced it together from other tales she had heard.

It was a coven, a cult… Vampires who set themselves up much as Trent Ikathon had. They held Mollymauk as their captive, drained him of his blood over the course of… it had to have been years. He spoke of dreams where he was a child, where he watched other children be… be slowly flayed alive, their flesh consumed, their blood drank, their bones turned to instruments and decoration. Where he was a young adult, feasted upon until he was empty of blood, until he was on the cusp of death… only to be brought back to life.

The worst of his nightmares, the ones that would start him screaming the loudest, were ones where nothing happened. He would dream of blackness, reach out to touch it and realize, in his dream, that it was solid. That he was trapped in some small space with no escape.

I knew this feeling well. Mollymauk Tealeaf’s nightmare was my waking evening, reaching out and touching the lid of my coffin. But unlike in his dream, I could shove the lid aside and go about my night.

These monsters had him again. It was the only explanation for his disappearance.

“Where?” I asked, my mouth stuffed with cotton, all of the moisture gone from it.

Yasha told me and I took her with me, hurried to find Nott and Jester. We would mount a rescue, the four of us, we would retrieve Mollymauk from his nightmare.

I loved him too much to allow him to live in such a way. If need be, I would kill him to stop his suffering.

( _Across the room, the cat yowled. Fjord jumped, cussed under his breath as his pen left a jagged line across the paper. Caleb laughed to himself, shaking his head and standing._

_“Dinner, of course, Frumpkin.” He scratched the cat’s head lightly, filled his food bowl and stood by the counter, looked across the small space. “You believe my story, Fjord?”_

_“I do. It’s… It’s an amazin’ story, no doubt, and I’m sure that written up it’ll look like fiction, but… Hearing you tell it, I can’t help but believe every word outta your mouth.” He met blue eyes across the dim room, held them steady of his own free will. “It’s gettin’ close to the end, isn’t it?”_

_“_ Ja _… Very close to the end. To the more difficult parts to put into words.” Caleb paced the room a minute longer before sitting down, tapping his fingers on the edge of the table. “You have to understand, I was as much of a monster as any of the rest of them. We were not stopping an evil because it was evil. We were saving one person for selfish reasons…”_ )

We didn’t know the cost of what we were attempting.

The wooded mountains where this cult was felt like a home I had abandoned long ago. We moved through them in our small group, Yasha’s familiarity with the area and mine with the terrain keeping our approach quiet. I split off from the group to scout ahead, to look for this ritual site Yasha had told us about…

We weren’t quiet enough. I was not quiet enough. A body slammed into me, something sharp pressed to my chest and I knew, even before the figure spoke, that I was seconds away from my end.

“Not so fast, blood-sucker.”

I blinked up at the form in the moonlight, looked past the stake currently pricking into my skin to a face mostly covered by a ridiculous pair of goggles. “Who are you?”

“The one that’s going to destroy your little coven. Come on. Get to your feet and start walking.”

“I am not with them.” I moved when she let me up, tried to force her to meet my eye. The absurd goggles blocked her gaze from me. “I am seeking them--”

“To join them? You can still lead me in. Go.”

The others would be moving up soon. I could hear Jester’s footfalls on twigs, though the human that stood before me apparently could not. I counted to ten in my head, then let out a low whistle and began walking.

As I suspected, she halted my movements immediately, shoved my back to a tree and the stake back to my chest. A clever one. “What was that?”

“That was me informing the others that there is no threat here.”

The line of her shoulders tensed, her head whipping around. “How many--what do you mean, no threat?”

“I mean we are on the same side. I am here to destroy them, not join them.”

“How many others are with you?”

“Three.” I looked past her shoulder, raised my voice. “Yasha first, please!”

Moving steadily, her arms crossed, Yasha approached us. There was a stake at her belt, a knife strapped to her shoulder. “Who are you?”

The girl before me studied her, pushed my back more firmly to the tree. “You’re a human.”

“I am. Are you hunting them?”

Long silence, her arms still tensed against me. “I am.”

“We can help each other. My name is Yasha. That is Caleb. And coming up are Nott and--”

“And I am Jester Fancypants.” Jester stepped forward, her hand clutching Nott’s firmly. “Please let Caleb go, he has to rescue his boyfriend.”

I was waiting for the stake to drive into my heart. Hoping I would be the first so that Jester and Nott could flee. I would fight if it gave them more time, but I would accept oblivion if it meant their safety.

That she let me go was unexpected. She shoved the goggles up to her forehead as I stumbled back to my small group, crossed her arms and stared at us. “Rescue. So he’s one of the ones that they’ve taken?”

“He is…” Yasha approached her cautiously, put herself between the three of us and this odd interloper. “His name is Mollymauk… he escaped them once before, but they found him again.”

“My family’s been hunting blood-suckers for generations… I’ve been after this particular group since they… It doesn’t matter. If you’re going in there to destroy them, I guess that puts us on the same side.” Her eyes narrowed on us. “For now.”

“And your name?” Letting Yasha take the lead seemed like our safest option, though her demeanor was less warm than Jester’s may have been.

“Beauregard. Call me Beau.”

Our tentative midnight alliance got us to the door. Nott’s light feet crept around it, circled twice before she reported back to us.

“Two guards at the front door, two at the back. There are windows but they’re all boarded up. No lights inside.”

“Probably underground,” Yasha whispered, peering through the trees. “The guards, are they humans or vampires?”

“One of each.”

“Why would humans be guarding a place that they’re killing humans?” Jester whispered, inching forward and holding my arm.

“Because they get told that they’ll be changed if they’re good enough… They get lied to,” Beau answered before I could, her fists clenching at her sides. “Come on.”

“Wait. We need a plan.” I watched in the moonlight, counted seconds as one of the guards at the back disappeared inside and returned. “Split into two groups. Nott, me, Beauregard to the front. Jester, Yasha to the back. Be as quiet as possible. Humans kill vampires and vampires kill humans.”

Somehow, we were quiet enough. We felled our prey, drank hungrily as Beauregard used stake and blade on the vampire. She looked away as Nott and I partook, cleared her throat and crossed her arms.

“Don’t make me take you out next.”

“We need our strength,” I answered, wiping the sleeve of my coat across my mouth. “And that one would have been killed or turned regardless, _ja_?”

The five of us moved inside, through the dusty, decaying house, looking for any sign of a downstairs. There was nothing, we were prepared to return outside and search there, when Beau stopped us, pressed a hand against the base of the wall and waved us over.

“Airflow,” she barely whispered the word, nodding to the wall. We searched it quickly, found the release to allow it to open up. A short hallway greeted us, leading to a staircase downward.

It was… horrifying. Even I, who have seen so much death, who have caused so much death, was nauseated. Jester and Nott gripped my hands tightly, stayed close to me as we passed paintings made in blood on skin tanned like leather. As we ducked under ornaments of small bones, children’s bones. Candles sat upon tiny skulls lined the steps downward and I could hear Beau or Yasha attempting to keep in her gorge behind us.

We reached the bottom and gazed upon Mollymauk Tealeaf’s nightmares.

Have you read the comic books, the tales of horrifying vampires that they write for children? Over the top, gorey, entirely for gruesome pleasure… This place was like a tribute to that mindset. My own stomach revolted at the thought. I was a killer, a taker of life and drinker of blood, but this… I would not have dreamt of committing such atrocities in a million of my eternal lifetimes.

They were in the midst of some type of ritual, surrounding a center altar lined with candles. The flames shook and bounced as whoever was under the altar beat and clawed to escape. I heard a scream and my lungs cramped.

Mollymauk was under that altar.

At my side, Yasha tensed. She had recognized his yell as well, understood intrinsically what was happening. We moved together, five on many, taking them by surprise, interrupting whatever dark ceremony they were in the midst of.

It was a difficult fight. We did not walk away unharmed… But we fared better than they did. Beauregard and Yasha chased the last of them into the rising sun, watched them turn to ash. They found us fighting to free Mollymauk from the coffin he had been sealed in, assisted in prying the lid open.

He attacked us with a fury, screaming and beating his fists against my chest until I caught his wrists. Until I spoke his name, over and over, and brought some semblance of sanity to him.

His eyes were wide, vacant, looking not at me but at the horrors he had been through. His skin was ashen, sluggish blood falling from the marks he had hidden in his tattoos, another smear of deep red around his mouth. I held him when he finally calmed enough to be held, pressed his face to my shoulder and stroked his hair.

“You are safe, Mollymauk Tealeaf… You will not be harmed again, Mollymauk Tealeaf.” Tension drained from him every time I spoke his name, and so I continued to do so.

“Lucien,” he finally gasped into my ear, his arms tightening around me. “They called me Lucien… They said I would be the vessel for their god, for their Nonagon.”

“You are Mollymauk Tealeaf,” I whispered back. “Vessel for only yourself. Mollymauk Tealeaf, fabulous fortune teller of the Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities. And with me, you are safe.”

We spent the day there, left exhausted as the sun set. Mollymauk stayed close to me, asked no questions when I disappeared to quickly drain the blood from a rabbit Nott had caught. He held my hand again as soon as I returned, rested his head on my shoulder. The blood had helped. I felt in control, capable of protecting and providing.

“I’m so thirsty…” He whispered against my neck, lips brushing my skin. “Will you bring me a drink, Caleb?”

I looked to him, gently tilted his head up and studied his face. He looked ill, but not… different. “Mollymauk, did they give you their blood?”

“They made me…” He took a shuddering breath, looked down. “Not theirs. Others. The… the ones in the cages.”

They had made him drink human blood, in an attempt to turn him into their monster. I kissed his forehead and waved for Beauregard to bring him water.

In town we found proper beds for our human companions, found medical supplies in an all night drug store. Yasha tended to Molly’s injuries, minor as they were, and set him up with iron pills to regain his strength. Jester and Nott found a funeral home, broke in and stole two coffins for us to sleep in.

Molly’s eyes were on me as I opened mine, wide with renewed terror. “You’re one of them…”

“I am a vampire, yes. But I am not one of them. I am not… I do not do those things.”

“Do you drink human blood?”

“ _Ja_.” I would not lie to him. I thought I could not.

Beauregard snorted. “Not in this town, if you know what’s good for you.”

Mollymauk either didn’t hear her or ignored her. He stepped closer to my coffin, gently closed the lid and ran his hands over it. “How can you wake up in that and not panic?”

“Sometimes… sometimes I do panic,” I whispered, my hands settling over his, lacing our fingers together. “But I am in control. I can get out.”

“Will it…” He bit his lip, looked around the small hotel room. Jester and Nott had already settled in their coffin and closed the lid. The fighting had been hard for them. “Will it hold two people?”

“Molly you’re not seriously--” Beau started, going quiet when Yasha put a hand to her shoulder.

“It we are close, it will.” I opened the lid again, looked to him as I climbed inside. “I must warn you, though, that if you open the lid in the sun, it will kill me. Use that information how you like.”

“I’m putting the blankets over the windows,” Yasha whispered, nodding to the two beds. “We’ll only need one for today.”

The world outside was still black as pitch, but I could feel the sunrise coming. I beckoned Mollymauk gently, left my arm open in invitation… And after a pause, he joined me. Our bodies pressed close as the lid came down, my hand over his rapidly beating heart. “It is okay, Mollymauk Tealeaf,” I whispered in our close darkness. “I will not let you be harmed.”

So many lies I told the man I loved. So many promises I could never keep.

It was gradual, so gradual I did not notice it. He slept during the day with me, in my coffin, in my arms. Wandered at night. He never questioned when I would disappear to feed. Frequently complained of his unquenchable thirst. That should have told me. That should have prepared me.


	9. Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The only student of mine to truly understand the lesson... Tell me what you have learned.”

Mollymauk Tealeaf’s eyes were brown. A rich, deep brown, like cocoa, like good earth for growing crops. They were earnest and kind and almost always held laughter.

The thing that currently held Yasha pinned to the ground glared at me with red eyes and blood on its chin.

“Jester! Beauregard!” I called for them as I advanced, as I looked from Yasha’s body--breathing, but barely--to the thing pretending to be my Mollymauk. “We have a problem!”

It hissed at me and turned its face back to Yasha’s neck, drew a gasp and a full-body shudder from her. I moved on instinct, tackled it away from Yasha as Jester and Beau came running into the room. Jester went to Yasha, her teeth already at her own wrist. We knew of only one way to save someone so close to death.

Beauregard watched me struggle with the thing that had overtaken Molly, her hand closed around the stake at her side. “Do not harm him!” I called to her, grunting as he threw me off and threw himself at her.

“No promises!” She was an incredibly apt fighter, shoved Mollymauk to the ground and pressed the stake over his chest. “Now stay down.” Her body held his locked in place, even as he struggled to bite her.

I moved quickly, knelt over them and forced him to look me in the eyes. The red glared back as I forced my will into him as much as I could. “Lie still.”

Slowly, the struggling ceased. Beauregard did not let up. Lucky for her.

“Who are you?”

“ **I am Lucien. I am Nonagon. I am your** **_god_** **.** ” The voice that hissed out of Molly’s throat sent a chill through me, the words almost meaningless under the tone.

Still, I kept my eyes locked, kept pushing my will to him. “You are Mollymauk Tealeaf.”

“ **The empty vessel is no more.** ”

A flash of brown, a flash of pain under the red and the hatred.

“Mollymauk Tealeaf, fabulous fortune teller of the Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities.” Another flicker, a moment of uncertainty. “You are my heart, Mollymauk Tealeaf. You are a whole human soul.”

“ **I am Death.** ” He surged forward, pierced his own chest with the stake. Red blood welled up, quickly turning black.

I had to act quickly. There was no answer in my mind, no method for removing whatever creature had overtaken my Mollymauk. I grasped his wrist, sank my teeth into his skin and began to drain his blood. I would not use one of the marks others had put on him for this.

He convulsed under me, hot with rage, bleeding more freely from his chest. I tasted it, the blood of Death, the blackness that surged inside myself. I could feel the cold hand of Death on my own shoulder, the urging to pull away before I was taken, too.

He lay still and quiet below me as that cold shadow of true eternity moved away. I retched, leaned over and vomited out the blackened blood I had drank from him. My hand grasped the stake he had thrust himself upon and I pulled it free, stared into the hollow cavity it left in his scarred chest. Carefully, gingerly, I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his slack lips. A final goodbye.

As you can imagine, I nearly screamed when he surged forward. Jester did scream. Beau probably did, as well.

Mollymauk’s arms wrapped around me, his brown eyes wide with panic. “Caleb,” he panted, dropping his weight to my chest. “I’m so… so thirsty…”

Yasha was coming around, waking to her new life of night. I brought them both with me outside, and together the three of us hunted. Together, I taught them the ways of the vampire.

I had amassed quite the coven. Quite the family.

( _“And this vampire hunter, Beau, was just… fine with it?” Fjord asked, scratching his head lightly. “Seems like that’d be the opposite of the case.”_

 _“She said she was there to keep us from becoming a problem, when there were only three of us. And she was quite in love with Yasha. After our numbers increased, she stayed for Yasha more than for the safety of humanity…” Caleb laughed dryly, shaking his head. “It was… pleasant, having an agent of the daytime willingly working with us.”_ )

The thing that tried to overtake him could not stand up to the sheer force of will that was Mollymauk Tealeaf--to our benefit. Perhaps he would have lost his sense of self if he were alone, as any man is likely to do, and succumb to this Nonagon… but we were with him. We kept him grounded and its influence began to fade, mentally. Unfortunately, the physical damage to his body had already been done.

Still, we were a happy group of six. We found it easy to travel the world… I finally kept my promise to Nott, to show her the places she had read about in books. We crossed the continents and the oceans, circled our way back into Europe with easy minds.

We should have been prepared. We were not the only ones growing our strength…

In Germany, I found where my home town had been. There was little left, but I walked the new streets and saw the old in my mind. I took Mollymauk to places that had once been familiar… I took all of them to the spot where my home had once stood, a new structure of brick and steel in its place now. It was not an entirely pleasant trip and I spent many nights away from my little group of friends, my little coven, hunting blood and being hunted by memories.

Trent Ikathon found me on one of these solo trips. I had kept a frequent eye backwards for him for so long, had had so many nightmares of his face, that seeing him before me… I almost didn’t believe it to be true.

“Caleb Widogast.” He spoke my name and a shudder ran through me, my body locking in place. “The only student of mine to truly understand the lesson... Tell me what you have learned.”

I stood straight, looked him in the eye as an equal. When the years stretch out before you far enough, they may as well be infinite. “Strength does not come from being alone,” I answered, my words slipping back through the centuries, into my mother tongue. “Strength comes from having others beside you.”

“It comes from having others _under_ you,” he corrected, hand darting out, striking the side of my face. “You have learned _nothing_.”

I stood before him, a man who had grown from the boy he had tried to control, the boy he had stolen the soul from. I stood before him proud, strong, knowing, suddenly, that I was not in this fight alone. It was a powerful feeling, to think of those that stood by my side, even if they were not physically there. “I have learned a far better lesson than you could ever teach.”

They must have been following me on my lonely walks. Concerned, loving, protective… My group fell in around me one by one, stepped up to face Trent by my side. Nott, her hand reaching up and holding mine. Jester beside her, fists clenched at her sides. Yasha and Beauregard a short distance away, flanking in with weapons in hand… And Mollymauk, close by me, his eyes glowing red and his smile lazy, a hand curling around my hip.

“ **Ikathon…** ” He spoke in the Nonagon’s voice, sending a chill up my spine. “ **My failed pupil…** ” The body language, however, was all Mollymauk. A vicious mockery of whatever power Trent Ikathon thought he had.

“I have learned,” I stated, my friends, my family closing in around me, “the powers of those that stand beside you. Of those that choose to stay with you out of love rather than fear.”

“You know so little…” He laughed, tilted his head back to the sky and let forth a chuckle. The answering sounds surrounded us, the coven he had grown closing in. So many against our group, but as I squeezed Nott’s hand, as I looked to Jester, to Yasha, to Beau, as I felt Molly’s fingers dig into my skin… It was power.

It was not an easy fight, their numbers keeping us isolated, each of us taking on two, three at a time. I kept one eye on Trent as I fought, not willing to let him escape me again.

We were ragged, close to sunrise, the majority of his underlings down. The rest in the process of fleeing, looking to Trent for permission to leave.

I closed in on him as he stood smug, exhausted, bleeding freely from more places than I could count. He stood unscathed, unmoving as I took a desperate swing at him..

“You are so pathetic… Just like those other two. Tell me, did you even feel _powerful_ when you murdered them?”

I had felt terrified, as I did now. I had felt myself doing something unthinkable, something so completely wrong to my sense of morality, as skewed as it was. But this time…

This time I felt right, as well.

Beau was at my side, snorting with disgust, wiping blood from under her nose. “All you vampires are so… so fuckin’ _pretentious_.” Her voice rose, high and mocking. “‘Oh, you can’t kill me, I’m so ancient and powerful, oh.’ News for you, buddy, the sun don’t care how old you are. And it’s comin’ up in about ten minutes…” The woods were quiet around us in pre-dawn… More than ten minutes, maybe, but not much.

Wood slipped into my hand, Yasha pressing a stake to my palm with a nod. I closed my fingers around it, looked around as my group joined me.

“You know, Caleb…” Nott’s little voice, close at my side. “The books say that if a vampire’s creator is destroyed, any power that creator had over it is lost.” She put her hand on mine as we backed Trent to a tree, looked up at me earnestly. “Let’s do an experiment!”

“You cannot! You will not!” Trent looked among us, panic growing on his face.

“He can and he will! Do it, Caleb!” Jester’s voice cheering me on, her hands on my shoulders.

“You know not what you do!” Desperation led him to lies.

“I think he knows plenty.” Mollymauk slipped his hand over mine with Nott’s, squeezed down gently. His voice was his own again, the snarl of the Nonagon receded.

“You are not as powerful or wise as you think, Trent Ikathon.”

I drove the stake into him, through him, pinned his form to the tree. Black blood welled around it, gouted out and painted the forest. It fell from his lips, his eyes going dark as midnight, locking on me.

“Betrayer!” He croaked, one hand lifting, one finger pointing a curse at me. “You will suffer for all eternity!”

I felt the darkness roll through me… and then pass off. Curses only work if you have a soul, I guess.

We hurried back to our coffins, barely beat the sunrise. Beauregard remained, watched as Trent turned to ash… The next night I felt no different… neither darker nor lighter.

It was enough.

We returned to America, to New York, and continued our long lives of eternal night.

And that… is where you have found me, Fjord.


	10. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The body dies like this..."

“And that… is where you have found me, Fjord.”

He blinked, coming to almost from a daze, notes still being haphazardly written. Fjord instinctively looked for a clock, saw none and turned his attention back to Caleb. “That’s… it?”

“That is my story.”

He exhaled slowly, closed his notebook and stretched out his writing hand. “The others…”

“They come and go as they please. We are family, we are coven, but we are not bound together by anything more than our fondness for each other.”

He breathed slowly, processed the information. Thought of the story he could tell… if anyone would believe him. “There has to be somethin’ more.”

“You seek a deeper meaning in the soulless life of eternity?”

“Your power, your… gift--”

Caleb laughed, shallow and humorless. “My _curse_.”

Fjord sat forward, met Caleb’s blue, blue eyes earnestly. “Will you change me? Will you make me like you? I want to know, I want to have that _power_.”

Fury overtook him in an instant, fingers digging into the table. “Have you heard nothing of what I have said? This is not _power_ , this is not a _gift_ , it is a damnation. I am a monstrosity, and you wish to be _like_ me?”

The door squeaked, opened to the room the cat had come from. A girl crossed the threshold and joined them, climbed onto Caleb’s lap to gaze at Fjord with unblinking eyes. “Temper, Caleb.”

“Besides, he _is_ cute…” Fjord whipped his head around, saw another woman leaning on the counter with one cocked hip. “I bet he’d look even cuter with fangs.”

“Oh, you’re nothing but trouble waiting to happen if you’re so eager to become this…” Another voice from the other side of the room, by the window. Fjord watched the man saunter across the room and plant a kiss on the top of Caleb’s head.

“Seriously, you want to be a blood-sucking monster?” A different door opened, two women stepping from the room.

The taller one raised an eyebrow. “ _You_ asked for it, Beau.”

“That’s ‘cause I didn’t want to get old without you.”

Fjord pushed his chair away from the table, looked around the room of vampires. The coven he had stumbled into. Caleb, Nott, Jester, Mollymauk, Yasha, and Beau. He swallowed nervously, licked his lips. “Maybe I should… Maybe I should just go. Keep the notes. Keep the laptop. K-Keep the phone with the recordin’, yeah?”

He backed towards the door, stopped when there was a hand on his back. His eyes darted around the room, throat clicking dryly as he tried to swallow. Caleb was no longer in his chair. “No, really,” a voice whispered in his ear, warm breath trailing along his neck. “Tell me again that you wish to have this.”

Would they let him go, if he said he wanted to leave? Fjord wasn’t willing to bet on it. Would they change him, if he said he wanted it? No, he didn’t think so… This was death waiting to happen.

“The body dies like this,” Caleb whispered against his neck, teeth piercing the sensitive skin over his jugular.

“The spirit dies like this,” he heard Molly’s words, felt a wrist gushing warm blood press to his lips. He drank of this new life, this new death, looking up into red eyes.

“The soul dies…” Jester took his hands as he rose, as he felt the warning press of sunrise in the back of his skull, “when you are alone.”


End file.
